Financial transactions generally require the cooperative assistance of many individuals and entities. For example, a typical real estate transaction may involve a buyer, a seller, a realtor, a mortgagor, and a title company. For the purpose of completing the transaction, many of these or other individuals may produce transaction-related documents relevant to that individual's role in the transaction. In the case of a real estate transaction, for example, a realtor may generate a buyer-seller's contract, a mortgagor may generate mortgage documents, and title company may generate a Deed of Title. These documents are typically presented to the buyer and/or seller at a closing event. The buyer and seller must then go through each document and execute the documents in all the appropriate places. Because real estate and other financial transactions generally require that the parties sign multiple documents and often require the parties to sign a document multiple times, the closing event may be a time-consuming and generally inefficient process requiring the physical presence of many individuals related to the transaction.
For the purpose of familiarizing the parties with documents in advance of a closing event, the documents related to a transaction may be managed by a Transaction Management System (TMS). The TMS may maintain and store documents related to a transaction in a file that is associated with the particular transaction. Where the TMS is an Internet-based system, the TMS may make it possible for the parties and entities involved in the transaction to manage and view digital versions of the documents online. As a result, the parties and entities involved in a transaction may be granted protected access to transaction-related documents and may be permitted to share information with each other. For example, a buyer may log-on to the TMS to view a mortgage document. If the buyer identifies an error in the document, that error may be communicated to the mortgagor such that it may be fixed before the closing event. Although such systems may make the closing of the transaction a smoother event, closing events continue to be paper intensive. As a result, parties and entities involved in the transaction are required to be present at the closing event for the execution of printed copies of the transaction documents.